2006 Grand Caravan SXT. We changed the front brakes and rotors for inspection plus the rotors were warped a little. Now I have more of a chatter feeling with the brand new stuff, We checked and the calipers are tight. Getting a little worried driving as I don't want anything to go wrong. Parts are from Advance auto and aren't the most expensive ones. Any ideas?

 

Sure you put everything back together correctly?

 

I didn't do it. A friend of mine and seems like he knows what he is doing and not much really as far as parts.

 

Doesn't seem that way to me. The worst pads and rotors you can buy aren't going to chatter out of the box if they're installed correctly, unless they happen to have a manufacturing defect (which is probably not the case). A far more likely suspect is failure to clean and properly lube the guide pins, especially if they had been fairly well gunked-up. Lots of air into the fluid might also cause some problems, but you would have most likely noticed a soft/low pedal if that were the case. One non-installation possibility is a REALLY poor break-in of the new parts. But that would likely need to have been a wet road, along with keeping the brakes applied after getting them extra hot. Doing that could deposit enough pad material unevenly on the rotor to cause chattering. Fairly unlikely for that to happen though.
If your friend can't diagnose and correct the problem, you may need to take it to a shop unless you can live with what's happening.

 

We took it apart again today and I watched this time to make sure everything is ok. The only thing we seen was the caliper pins on the passenger side weren't greased so did that and also re greased the drivers side pins. Brakes still look good as do the rotors and everything is tight. Took it for a test drive and still has the same problem so if no one has anymore ideas I think I will call monroe Monday and see how much they charge to diagnose.

Also my friend took it for a drive himself and he only noticed a little chatter and he also used the hand control (yes I have hand controls installed because of my disability) to brake and said it and said he felt it just slightly more and if his dodge truck was like that he would be happy but mine has never had this problem only the feel you get from warped rotors and this isn't close to that feeling.

 

By "chatter" do you mean a noise or can you feel it? Maybe check the rear brakes as well.

 

Can feel it. Yesterday it was almost like a thumping when braking like there is a bump on a rotor. Never thought to check the rear seeing as it didn't happen until adter changing the front.

 

Took the van to Monro to have the brakes checked and both front rotors are warped and these aren't even 2mos old.

 

Either a caliper is sticking or someone is very hard on brakes. Are you sure the hand control modification is releasing the calipers all the way?

 

Did you watch your friend do the original install and if so, did he use an impact gun? No first hand experience with it myself, but I've read accounts of high lug torque bending rotors. If he used a gun with a torque setting way above spec (i.e. 100 ft lbs), and also didn't use a criss-cross pattern, it may be possible to bend them during the install. The other thing that comes to mind is if some very hard braking was done (such as on steep hills), immediately followed by driving through water (or maybe a driving rain storm). Of course it's always possible they were defective out of the box, but 2 like that doesn't seem very likely to me.